he told Grace everything, and her tender sympathy was the balm of his
life. She used to put on cheerfulness for his sake, even when she felt
it least.

One day, however, he found her less bright than usual, and she showed
him an advertisement--Bollinghope house and park for sale; and she was
not old enough nor wise enough to disguise from him that this pained
her. Some expressions of regret and pity fell from her; that annoyed
Henry, and he said, "What is that to us?"

"Nothing to you: but I feel I am the cause. I have not used him well,
that's certain."

Henry said, rather cavalierly, that Mr. Coventry was probably selling
his house for money, not for love, and (getting angry) that he hoped
never to hear the man's name mentioned again.

Grace Carden was a little mortified by his tone, but she governed
herself and said sadly, "My idea of love was to be able to tell you
every thought of my heart, even where my conscience reproaches me a
little. But if you prefer to exclude one topic--and have no fear that it
may lead to the exclusion of others--"

They were on the borders of a tiff; but Henry recovered himself and said
firmly, "I hope we shall not have a thought unshared one day; but, just
for the present, it will be kinder to spare me that one topic."

"Very well, dearest," said Grace. "And, if it had not been for the
advertisement--" she said no more, and the thing passed like a dark
cloud between the lovers.

Bollinghope house and park were actually sold that very week; they were
purchased, at more than their value, by a wealthy manufacturer: and
the proceeds of this sale and the timber cleared off all Coventry's
mortgages, and left him with a few hundred pounds in cash, and an estate
which had not a tree on it, but also had not a debt upon it.

Of course he forfeited, by this stroke, his position as a country
gentleman; but that he did not care about, since it was all done with
one view, to live comfortably in Paris far from the intolerable sight of
his rival's happiness with the lady he loved.

He bought in at the sale a few heirlooms and articles of furniture--who
does not cling, at the last moment, to something of this kind?--and
rented a couple of unfurnished rooms in Hillsborough to keep them in.
He fixed the day of his departure, arranged his goods, and packed his
clothes. Then he got a letter of credit on Paris, and went about the
town buying numerous articles of cutlery.

But this last simple ac